CNN Headline – 3/10/11
Virginia Beach, VA – A Virginia Beach woman has come under the scrutiny of the national media for eating a pizza last Tuesday night while almost completely neglecting her tater tots.
Charlene Williamson’s Tuesday started off like any other Tuesday for the 37 year-old Suffolk native. After making a mayonnaise sandwich and cutting up some cheese sticks for her 8 year-old daughter’s lunch, Williamson left for her job at Home Depot where she works in the paint supply department. As the day progressed, Williamson began to day-dream about the pizza she was planning on ordering for Pizza Night Tuesday.
“Every Tuesday at the Depot we get Panera for lunch, which I don’t really like, but it’s O.K. cause I know I can gorge myself with pizza later that night,” said Williamson with a glint in her eye as she recalled that fateful pizza.
“We usually get Little Ceasar’s, but I was having a good day at work and, around 11:00 I started to consider splurging on something like Bella or Boulevard Pizza,” Williamson said, lost deep in her own memory.
“I’ve had Bella a few times before, and it’s really good, but you know what you’re getting and I figured if I wasn’t gonna go with Little Caesar’s I might as well go all out and get the Boulevard. Besides, I heard they had a new pizza called the All-American, which has sausage, hamburger, and even cut-up hot dog sprinkled underneath almost a full pound of the best mozzarella in East Virginia.
“On the other hand, I was trying to get Charlotte, my daughter, to lose some weight and Bella has a great green salad I could order for her. And when I started to think about the salad I remembered this place Josie form work told me about that just opened up. It’s some European-style pizza place, Mancurio or Manchusco or something, and they put goat cheese and other European things on the pizza, and supposedly it’s supposed to be really good for you, and decent tasting at that. Needless to say, I had no idea what to do for dinner that night. Luckily I still had almost 6 hours of work left to think about it.”
By 4:30, with roughly a half hour left on the clock, Williamson finally made-up her mind to order a large All-American pizza from Boulevard Pizza. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” she said.
Williamson left Home Depot, picked up her daughter from soccer practice, called Boulevard and placed an order for a large All-American to be delivered at 6:30, and began to set the table as soon as she got home. Concentrating on the afternoon news proved impossible to Williamson, and she tried everything from reading a magazine, to helping Charlotte with her homework, to telling Charlotte she needed to shower before dinner because Williamson didn’t want a smelly soccer player sitting at the table while she tried to eat a genuine masterpiece, all to no avail. The minutes before the pizza’s arrival seemed to take an eternity, but at long last the doorbell rang, changing Williamson’s life forever.
“There was the pizza box, as I expected, but the guy was also carrying a little paper bag of something. He said the large All-American came with complimentary tater tots. Who was I to complain? Who was I to say ‘No, I don’t want free tater tots?’ I wasn’t raised that way. I figured I’d nibble on them if I got sick of the pizza. Or, I thought half-joking, maybe Charlotte could eat them when she finally got out of the shower in case I had eaten the whole pizza by then. How was I supposed to know what would happen,” Williamson finished, tearing up.
What happened over the next 20 minutes will haunt Williamson as long as she lives. She absent-mindedly set the tots on the kitchen counter, then sat down at her perfectly placed tablecloth and opened the pizza box. Her nostrils were hit with a smell more mouthwatering than anything she had ever experienced. The pizza didn’t stand a chance, and the tots were pushed to the darkest recess of Williamson’s mind.
“That hour or so is still so blurry,” Williamson said. “I remember opening the pizza box and smelling that incredible smell, then…I’m just, I'm not sure what happened next. I ate the pizza, and it was bliss. It wasn’t until I was down to the last piece or two that I realized I hadn’t even touched the tots. I was so ashamed. The good people at Boulevard were kind enough to give me free tater tots, the least I could have done was try them. Granted, it was pizza night, and my focus was definitely on the pizza, but…I mean, one or two tots isn’t much of a commitment and it would have at least showed I tried them and appreciated Boulevard’s gesture. Instead, I rudely forgot about them and let them get cold and gross on the counter top. I wasn’t about to microwave them either. Have you ever tried microwaved tots? They’re awful. So soggy and gooey inside. I wasn’t going to do that, I wasn’t about to disgrace them even further. I just threw them away. Oh God, it was terrible. I don’t know if I’ll ever live down the shame of throwing away perfectly good complimentary tots.”
As Williamson devoured scrumptious piece after scrumptious piece, and the tater tots lay neglected, forgotten, and alone to slowly decompose in the open air on the counter top, Charlotte slipped in the shower, banged her head on the water faucet, and died.
-Pete Higgins
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